Advanced Competitive Strategy will introduce new topics and modules with even more real world examples and opportunities for student interaction than in the previous course Competitive Strategy (https://www.coursera.org/learn/competitivestrategy).
In Advanced Competitive Strategy, we will look at how companies can build up and maintain their customer base by increasing switching costs and facilitating strategic customer lock-ins. We will find out how firms can increase their profits by pursuing suitable price discrimination and product differentiation strategies.
We will look at examples of what is acceptable behavior under the premises of EU competition and US antitrust policies and discover exciting ways of how companies can increase their returns by strategically making use of network effects and economies of size. We will further intensify our newly acquired knowledge about network effects and discuss strategies that are explicitly tailored to network markets.
We will analyze the workings of mergers and acquisitions and, moreover, support you in considering alternative strategies that can help companies grow organically.

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Achieve Growth with the Help of Partners

We will look at the trends, goals and processes of mergers and acquisitions, differentiate the two terms and examine external and internal factors that can hinder the process. We will also find out about the striking advantages that can make a successful merger or an acquisition worthwhile if you have identified the right match for your company and we will eventually learn about the process that is involved in real world M&A activities.